hardly have been at a lower ebb than it was when what is known as the
Evangelical Movement came to trouble the placid, if stagnant and turbid,
pool of the Established Church. Of course it did not transform the
Church entirely. Read Miss Austen's novels: the most perfect pictures of
life ever written. There are, I suppose, some half-dozen clergymen,
pleasant and unpleasant, depicted in them, and we may be sure that they
fairly well represent the typical average country parson of the period.
Whatever they may otherwise be, they all agree in one point, namely in
the complete absence of any such thing as a trace of spirituality. But
in the early nineteenth-century Evangelicanism--specially that terrible
variety Calvinism--was the dominant factor where religion really
prevailed as a living influence; and it is to its influence, I firmly
believe, that we may attribute the genuine detestation of religion which
was so marked a feature of a part of the Victorian and most of the
succeeding time. I am not, of course, forgetting the Oxford Movement,
but, important as that was and is, in its earlier years it was almost
entirely confined to clerical circles, exercising comparatively little
influence on the laity and practically none at all on that great middle
class which had been so much affected by the Wesleys, Whitefield, Scott,
Newton, and the other pundits of Evangelicanism. Take the characteristic
novel of the movement, if novel it should be called, Newman's _Loss and
Gain_: I do not remember a single male character in it who is not in
Holy Orders or on the way thereto. Hence, so far as religious influences
are concerned, it is to the Evangelical Movement that we have to look.
Now, though in my opinion it was the parent of many evils, there is no
doubt that there was in it real fervour; intense devotion; a genuine
desire to know and do God's will; a burning love for our Lord; coupled
with all which were the most distorted and distorting ideas of what was
and what was not sin ever conceived by any brain. Of this creed I can
speak from personal knowledge, for I was brought up in it and know it
from bitter experience.
The exponents of these views were never tired of instilling into their
pupils the need for conversion, which was supposed to be a sudden
operation. I have heard persons name the exact moment by the clock and
the day on which theirs took place, and it was often effected by a
single text. I have seen the Bible of an eminent leader in this line
which contains a number of texts painted round with colours, each of
which was associated with the conversion of some particular individual.
The process was supposed to be effected by the "acceptance of Christ,"
and though it was said to be free to all, it was clear to some at least
of those who quite earnestly and really desired it, that, however ardent
their desires, they could not secure their realisation. One was supposed
to know in some mysterious manner that one was converted; the operation
was permanent in its character; it could not be repeated; once
thoroughly effected the converted person neither wished to sin nor
really did sin. If anyone supposed to have been converted did relapse
into evil ways, then he never had really been converted, but only seemed
to have been. I have heard this circular form of argument urged most
strongly by those who were (by constitution apparently) absolutely
unable to see the illogical position which they were taking up. A
further, and the most awful, part of the teaching was that however much
one desired to be converted, and however earnestly one prayed for it, if
one died without it damnation was certain. Lastly there was the
encouraging thought that everything done prior to conversion was equally
without merit; in fact, one might almost say, equally evil. These things
were dinned into the heads of the young, in season and out of season; is
it any wonder that so many of them grew up to hate religion? I remember
myself the positive terror with which I went out even to minor
entertainments, because I knew that in all probability close
interrogation would be made as to my spiritual condition.
Let me be reminiscent and recall one case. I was a boy at school and
spending my Easter vacation away from home and with friends. It was my
lot to have to dine one night with an old friend of my father's, a
person of some distinction, who having, I believe, been a _viveur_ in
his youth, had in later years embraced the most ferocious type of
Evangelicanism. When the ladies had retired I was left alone with this
formidable person, whom I eyed much as a rabbit eyes a snake into whose
cage he has been introduced. Nor were my fears groundless, for no sooner
was the room empty than he peremptorily demanded of me whether I was
saved. On hearing my trembling but perfectly truthful reply that I
really did not know, he struck the table with his fist (I can see the
whole thing quite plainly to-day, though it is five-and-forty years
ago), exclaiming, "Then you are a fool, and if you were to die to-night
you most certainly would be damned." I ask those who were brought up in
a more kindly and more rational scheme of Christianity whether it is any
wonder that those whose youth was spent in these gloomy shades should
welcome the thought that there was no such being as a God?
Associated with this gloomy creed a new series of sins was invented, as
if there were not enough already in the world. It was sinful to dance,
even under the most domestic and proper circumstances. It was a sin to
play cards, even when there was no money on the game. It was a sin to
go to the theatre, even to behold the most inspiring and instructive
plays. It was even held by some, as we shall see, that the writing of
stories or works of imagination was sinful. I once heard a professor of
this creed express the doubt whether Shakespeare had not, on the whole,
done much more harm than good, and state that he himself would not allow
the works of Dickens to occupy a place in a hospital library, from
which, as a matter of fact--for on this point the discussion had
arisen--they had been excluded by the then chaplain of the institution,
a man of like views. In fact, the idea of God which was presented to the
youth of that period and brought up under such influences was--I do not
say wilfully--that of a kind of super-policeman: a hard-hearted
policeman, with an exaggerated code of misdoings, forever waiting round
a corner to pounce on evil-doers, and, one was obliged to think,
apparently almost pleased at the opportunity of catching them. It need
not be said that no disrespect is intended in this. It is a simple and
truthful statement of the kind of impression made upon one person by the
teachings of that age and school. Is it any wonder that persons brought
up in such a creed should experience a feeling of relief on learning
that there was no God, no sin, no punishment? Add to this the terrors of
the exaggerated Sabbatarianism of the period. What was the Sunday
programme? Two lengthy sessions of Family Prayers; two attendances--each
lasting at least an hour and a quarter--on services in church; one,
sometimes two, hours of Sunday School; no books but those of a religious
character; no amusements of any kind even for the very young, unless the
putting together of a dissected map of Palestine could be called an
amusement; what a method of rendering Sunday attractive to the young!
Is it any wonder that those brought up on such a plan abandoned, with a
sigh of relief, all religious exercises when at last they were able to
do so? I notice that Mr. Belfort Bax, in his _Reminiscences of a Mid and
Late Victorian_, alludes to this matter, saying that, "The most cruel of
all the results of mid-Victorian religion was, perhaps, the rigid
enforcement of the most drastic Sabbatarianism. The horror of the tedium
of Sunday infected more or less the whole of the latter portion of the
week." _Experto crede!_ He says further, dealing with the 'fifties, that
"the intellectual possibilities of the English people were then stunted
and cramped by the influence of the dogmatic Calvinistic theology which
was the basis of its traditional sentiment;"--it is exactly the point
which I am trying to make.
We may now examine two instances of the kind of teaching with which I am
dealing and its results. The first is that of the poet Cowper, and
anyone who takes the trouble to read his life as written by Southey will
find the whole piteous tale fully drawn out. Southey hated the Catholic
Church, of which, by the way, he knew absolutely nothing, but he had
sufficient sense to reject the teachings of Calvinism. Cowper was at
times insane and at other times of anything but a well-balanced mind,
and he was just the kind of man who never ought to have been brought
under the influences to which he was subjected. His principal adviser
was the Rev. John Newton, a well-known Calvinistic clergyman of the
Church of England. He must have been a man of compelling character, for
he it was who brought the Rev. Thomas Scott, Rector of Aston Sandford,
out of Socinianism, which, though a minister of the Church of England,
he professed, into the Calvinistic view of things, as Scott himself
tells us in his book _The Force of Truth_; and it must not be forgotten
that it was to the writings of this same Scott that Newman tells us (in
his _Apologia_) that he owed his very soul. Newton, like many of his
fellows, had no sort of doubt as to his right to act as a director of
souls, nor of his profound knowledge of how they should be dealt with.
Yet it is to be remembered that, whilst the Catholic priest is obliged
to undergo a long and careful training before he is permitted to take up
this perilous task, Newton and those of his kind undertook it without
any training whatever. Cowper, as everybody knows, was carefully and
kindly tended by Mrs. Unwin, a woman a good deal older than himself,
against whose character no word of reproach was ever uttered, the widow
of an old friend of the poet. Newton wanted to drive Mrs. Unwin out of
his house, but here at least Cowper rebelled and showed his very just
annoyance, Newton actually urged Cowper to abandon the task of
translating Homer, a labour undertaken to distract his poor sick mind
from thinking of itself, because such work, not being of a religious
character, partook of the nature of sin. It is no wonder that such a
rule of life had not infrequently the most distressing consequences.
Newton himself admits that his preaching had the reputation of driving
people into lunacy. In a letter asking that steps may be taken to remove
one poor victim to an asylum he says: "I hope the poor girl is not
without some concern for her soul; and, indeed, I believe a concern of
this kind was the beginning of her disorder. I believe," he continues,
"my name is up about the county for preaching people mad ... whatever
may be the immediate cause, I suppose we have near a dozen, in different
degrees, disordered in their heads, and most of them I believe truly
gracious people."
Let us turn to the other example which I propose to select, that given
by Mr. Gosse in his truly remarkable work _Father and Son_, one of the
most faithful pictures of life ever written. The first instance shall be
an extract from the diary of the mother, obviously a woman of great
power and gifts if she had been given an opportunity of displaying them.
"When I was a very little child," she writes, "I used to amuse myself
and my brothers with inventing stories such as I had read. Having, as I
suppose, naturally a restless mind and busy imagination, this soon
became the chief pleasure of my life. Unfortunately my brothers were
always fond of encouraging this propensity, and I found in Taylor, my
maid, a still greater tempter. I had not known there was any harm in it,
until Miss Shore" (a Calvinistic governess), "finding it out, lectured
me severely, and told me it was wicked. From that time forth I
considered that to invent a story of any kind was a sin. But the desire
to do so was too deeply rooted in my affections to be resisted in my own
strength," (she was at this time nine years of age), "and unfortunately
I knew neither my corruption nor my weakness, nor did I know where to
gain strength. The longing to invent stories grew with a violence;
everything I heard or read became food for my distemper. The simplicity
of truth was not sufficient for me; I must needs embroider imagination
upon it, and the folly, vanity and wickedness which disgraced my heart,
are more than I am able to express. Even now (at the age of
twenty-nine), though watched, prayed and striven against, this is still
the sin which most easily besets me. It has hindered my prayers and
prevented my improvement, and therefore has humbled me very much." It is
narrated of the well-known Father Healy that a young lady having
consulted him as to the sin of vanity, she feeling convinced, when she
looked in her glass, that she was a very pretty girl, was answered by
him, "My child, that is not a sin; it is a mistake!" It wanted some wise
adviser to make the same remark to this poor tortured and deluded woman.
Illness under this code was always a punishment sent from heaven, as,
indeed, it may be; but, "if anyone was ill it showed that 'the Lord's
hand was extended in chastisement,' and much prayer was poured forth in
order that it might be explained to the sufferer, or to his relations,
in what he or they had sinned. People would, for instance, go on living
over a cesspool, working themselves up into an agony to discover how
they had incurred the displeasure of the Lord, but never moving away."
One last instance, the most remarkable of all, and we may leave this
book. It need hardly be said that a father of the kind depicted in this
book would have a holy horror of the Catholic Church, and he had. He
"welcomed any social disorder in any part of Italy, as likely to be
annoying to the Papacy." He "celebrated the announcement in the
newspapers of a considerable emigration from the Papal dominions, by
rejoicing at this outcrowding of many, throughout the harlot's domain,
from her sin and her plagues," and he even carried his hatred so far as
to denounce the keeping of Christmas, which to him was nothing less than
an act of idolatry.
On a certain Christmas Day, the servants, greatly daring, disobeyed the
order of their master and actually had the audacity to make a small
plum-pudding for themselves. Actuated by pity, no doubt, and by a
feeling of kindness towards a small boy deprived of all the joys of the
season, they pressed a slice of this pudding upon the son, who
succumbed--very naturally--to the temptation. Shortly after, however,
being afflicted by a stomach-ache, remorse came upon him and he rushed
to his father, exclaiming: "Oh! papa, papa, I have eaten of flesh
offered to idols!" When the father learned what had happened, he sternly
said, "Where is the accursed thing?" Having heard that it was on the
kitchen table, "he took me by the hand, and ran with me into the midst
of the startled servants, seized what remained of the pudding, and with
the plate in one hand and me still tight in the other, ran till we
reached the dust-heap, where he flung the idolatrous confectionery on to
the middle of the ashes, and then raked it deep down into the mass. The
suddenness, the velocity of this extraordinary act, made an impression
on my memory which nothing will ever efface." Such is a plain
unvarnished account of the kind of way in which numbers of people were
brought up in the 'fifties and 'sixties of the last century. Can it be
wondered that those who had such a childhood should grow up with an
absolute horror of the Person in Whose name such things--absurdities
when not positive crimes--were perpetrated? I firmly believe that these
wholly false ideas of God and of sin have had more to do with the spread
of materialism than many will perhaps be disposed to admit. Educated
people, especially those trained in scientific methods, demand a certain
common sense and sobriety in their beliefs. If they are brought up to
believe that a grievous sin is committed when they invent an innocent
story; when they go to a theatre or to a dance, or play a game of cards;
if they have never known the demands of real Christianity as put
forward by the Catholic Church, is it likely that they will cleave to a
faith which apparently engenders such absurdities as the Christmas
pudding episode? It is, indeed, as Father Wasmann says, a thousand
pities that the reasonableness, the logic, the dignity of the Catholic
religion should remain for ever hidden from the eyes and minds of many
who so often are as they are, because they were brought up as they were.
In all these things we find the key to another problem. In another essay
in this volume I have called attention to the glad intelligence, as it
seems to a certain school of writers, that we are freed from the
"bugbear of sin," as one of them puts it; able to enjoy ourselves
without any thoughts of that kind.
Now I cannot but believe that such writers are thinking of the bugbear
of artificial sins invented by the professors of a gloomy creed of
religion. It is not to be supposed that any serious writer--and those to
whom I allude are eminently such--would speak or write with pleasure and
satisfaction of escaping from the bugbear of sins against morality or
against one's neighbour; from the bugbear of dishonesty or theft; of
taking away a person's character; of running away with his wife. I am
convinced that it is the invented crimes of card-playing, theatre-going,
and the like to which they are alluding: it could not surely be
otherwise; and that makes it all the more unfortunate that before
misusing a technical term like the word "sin," and thus perhaps
misleading some young and ardent mind, such writers could not follow
Father Wasmann's advice and study some simple manual of Catholic ethics,
from which they would learn the real doctrine of Christianity and would
discover how very different a thing it is and how very much more
reasonable than the distorted caricature which we have been studying.
§ 2. THEOPHOBIA: ITS NEMESIS
Whether my view as to the cause, or one of the causes, is right or not,
the fact remains that by the mid-Victorian period England had fallen to
a very large extent a prey to materialism. Many people attribute the
sudden onslaught of this to the publication of _The Origin of Species_
and the controversies of the foolish which followed thereon. Samuel
Butler, that brilliant writer who has not even yet come into his own,
sums up in his novel _The Way of All Flesh_ (and it may incidentally be
remarked, in himself) most of the characteristics of the day. Many a
parsonage home like that of the Rev. Theobald Pontifex existed in those
days, and more than one Ernest Pontifex emerged from them. Now in this
book Butler states that "the year 1858 was the last of a term during
which the peace of the Church of England was singularly unbroken," and
there no doubt he is right; "The Evangelical Movement ... had become
almost a matter of ancient history. Tractarianism had subsided into a
tenth-day's wonder; it was at work, but it was not noisy." Then he says
the calm was broken by the publication of three books: _Essays and
Reviews_, _The Origin of Species_, _Criticisms on the Pentateuch_ by
Colenso. Few persons probably now remember the first and the last of
these books; the fame of the second is likely to last long.
Whether again Butler is right in his idea as to the causes or not, as to
the fact there can be no doubt. We have arrived at a period when the
prevalent opinion amongst the intellectual classes was that
religion--belief in anything which could not be fully understood--was
impossible once one began to think seriously about it. Those who did not
really look into such questions might go on considering themselves to
believe in revelation, but the moment that a man seriously tackled the
subject, his religion was bound to go, just as that of Ernest Pontifex
did at the end of five minutes' conversation with an atheistic
shoemaker.[21] Agnosticism and materialism were in the air, and remained
the dominant features for quite a number of years. There were those who
deplored the loss of their faith such as it had been. Huxley obviously
did; and Romanes, who afterwards returned to the Church of England,
confessedly did. Such persons, and there were many of them, honestly
were unable to believe, and said so. A great deal of this was due to the
attitude of popular science at that time. It was in a hot fit, and was
going to explain everything, if not to-day, at least to-morrow. Now, as
Sir Oliver Lodge told us before the war, in his book _Continuity_, we
are in a cold fit and we seem only to know that nothing can be known.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, best known as the creator of _Sherlock Holmes_,
tells us in a recent book from which I shall have further to quote (_The
New Revelation_, Hodder and Stoughton, 1918): "When I had finished my
medical education in 1882, I found myself, like many young medical men,
a convinced materialist as regards our personal destiny." With the facts
contained in this statement I fully agree. The date in question is
almost exactly that at which I also became a qualified medical man, and
I, and I fancy most of my generation, believed ourselves to be agnostics
if not atheists. It was the atmosphere of the time, and so strong as
with difficulty to be resisted by those who resorted to the
Universities. The point which I want to make is that during the latter
part of the Victorian period we had come to a generation of
intellectuals practically devoid of religion and followed in that
respect by that always larger portion of any generation which, not
having brains to think for itself, yet desiring to follow the
intellectual _motif_ of the day, adopts whatever is the fashionable
attitude for the moment towards unseen things. Yesterday it was blank
negation; to-day it tends, as we shall see, to be spiritualism;
to-morrow it might be earnest faith: let us hope so. And as to
Calvinism, all this was _post hoc_ of course; _propter hoc_ also as I
think.
What followed? That is what we now have to consider. The first thing
which happened was the very natural discovery that science cannot
explain everything; has in fact a strictly limited range of country to
deal with. This discovery began to sap the foundations of materialism.
Then there came the further discovery that all was not well, as so many
supposed that it would be, under a scheme of life divorced from all
connection with religion. Mr. Lucas, who has given the world many
pleasant books, none of them with any obvious bias in favour of
religion, in _Over Bemertons_ (one of the most pleasant) makes one of
his characters, _Mr. Dabney_, deplore the loss of the seriousness of the
Victorian era: "We believe only in pleasure and success; our one ideal
is getting wealth." Parenthetically, is not that just what might be
expected? If there is really nothing but this world, what better can we
seek than as much pleasure as we can get out of it? _Over Bemertons_ was
first published in 1908, and the remedy which _Mr. Dabney_ then
suggested, with a really curious prophetical insight, has just been
vigorously applied. That remedy was "War, nothing more or less. A bloody
war--not a punitive expedition or 'a sort of a war'" (he quoted these
words with white fury) "'that might get us right again.' 'At great
cost,' I said. 'A surgical operation,' he replied, 'if the only means
of saving life, cannot be called expensive.'"